The Old Neighborhood

Channing Way near Bowditch

Not nostalgia more like memory half-erased

 Kaleidoscopic doors to the past

FREE
 PALESTINE
This has been here longer than I have,

And we're tired of waiting

 Behind this dentist's office on the second floor in back, 

Ray and Lucy dwelt therein from 1980 to 1984,

Visited by many a poet, artist and musician and a few scientists,

And by a few uninvited kooks as well 
I listed the address in my anarcho-surrealist zine,

A guy calling himself Duchamp rang looking for the office

 The Founders Rock indeed

 

 An old time Buddhist church down the street,

I went  inside once, they were very cool,

No one offered to shake my frontal extremity

Oneness in the Nembutsu

Sitar army at the crossroads,

Berkeley is a multicultural dynamo

If you can still find a parking space

for your cyanide pie-mobile

June 2015

Berkeley Remembers

 

Weeks after the horrific accident
new flowers, flags, and notes of condolence 

continue to appear

 Just up the sidewalk where the fatalities occurred

When a fourth floor balcony broke away
Six Irish students fell to their deaths,
Others were seriously injured

Library Gardens,

never again

Summertime

Digging the now

25 June 2015

Notes in English (after Rimbaud)

the burial turns into a burlesque

a burgher burbles bunkum

bunny caught in the bunting

canny canines found cannabis on the premises

to cannibalize a cantata

canoodle under a canopy of canon law

a canvas cantor

cantilever the cantankerous

the grocer was grisly and grim

the groom became groggy

his gray matter grid-locked

grimaces as his groin is groped

the riff-raff are rigid with rickets

unfit for the rickshaw

a riding crop rids one of ridicule

riflemen solve most riddles

I twigged the twilight zone

 Bought a turntable and twill slacks

tweed jacket and a turtleneck

 and went turquoise twenty-four seven
I looked twee

a twinkle on the tusk of my twin
twang not the twaddle on TV

April-June 2015

Note: 

Arthur Rimbaud lived for a time in England in a pas de deux with Paul Verlaine.  He made notes using words and phrases in English to learn the language. The notes were intuitively poetical.

This inspired my Surrealist parlour game in which a dictionary is opened at random to two pages en face and a small note or poem is derived using words predominantly from the two pages as dictated by objective chance and the free play of words and imagination.

A Day on the Bay with RAY

What was yesterday?  

a dream we dreamed long ago

For the Flaneur it's a recurring one,

Indulge him if you are free

1.

 Gangway

 Looks like my ride's here

 Shipping is big business at the Port of Oakland

Last year stevedores joined with demonstrators

To prevent the unloading of a Israeli ship

 Choppy waters denote stiff wind

But the air is sun-hot so it's not too cold

 Here we are again

 2.

Fisherman's Wharf Today

This sour dough bakery is popular with tourists,

They have dressed a bread made in the shape of a crocodile

In the triumphalist emblemata of corporate sports

 Face of the weather-beaten wharf

 There are many accurate historical displays

And interesting artifacts galore hereabout

This bogus pirate stuff obviously not withstanding

 Now this is a display of living history

They sell live Dungeness crabs too

 Skulls of sea and shore animals

 The venerable National Park visitor center

 Today I'm bound for the little beach 

Alongside the Hyde Street Pier

 3.

Hyde Street Pier 

Petit Dejeuner

It's a lovely place to spend time
Alone with a snowy egret

 An endlessly pleasant perspective

 Gentle visitors enjoying the Pier 

With it's historical demonstrations

The wind is often persistent here

This close to the Golden Gate

This little cove is sheltered 

By the windward fences and screens
of the swimming and boating clubs

 A boy came scurrying underneath

 Bravely entering the cold saltwater

In their little wet suits

Look into the glass onion

Go into the cold water

The water goes away again,

Leaves me buried in the sand

One contented sea-cat

 4.

A Round Trip

Time to rejoin the parade

Captain Trips is in the Wax Museum,

After his cremation Mill Valley was wrecked,

A white wax simulacrum of the King of Pop,

Now that's verisimilitude

Time to go back

Out on the water again,

Leave you land-loving women alone

The building on the left is the Blue and Gold dock

Over it rises Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower, North Beach, very, very high rents

To the right the high-rise financial district downtown,

Then at a distance the buildings of Nob Hill, with its astronomical rents,

Lastly, Russian Hill which you need be a Russian oligarch to afford

There is still a very brilliant side to San Francisco,

And there's a definite dark side

Well, there's the bridge,

Oakland awaits us with open arms

 5.

Bay Ship Sail By

 

so slowly descends

 a squadron of pelicans

the long day goes on

23 June 2015

Strolling Sunday Solstice

Ferry heading to Alameda,

Big cargo ship parked off the Port,

A lot going on today

Plenty of sunshine for the longest day of the year, 

the Flaneur stays close to home this Summer

 1.

Here comes Summertime

 Hmm, something's missing,

Can't quite put my finger on it...

 OK, here it comes...

Takes a good captain...

 Coming in to port...

 Coming in, coming in....

 Safe harbor

2.

Evening's Approach

 Ever ask yourself, Who am I?

How did I land here?

 Seems like it's been daylight since yesterday

 The Ramadan moon,

Everything else tries to look nondescript

 Here comes this place,

In distorting glass,
Another figment of the pre-fab faux future

 

 Another well-preserved nobody-home,

A Jewish wedding was going on in Preservation park,

A private affair on formerly public streets

Lawyers doing very well in the "Recovery,"

Mazel tov!

 Quietude at the farm museum

 The lonely June twilight

 Garden in the fading light of Solstice

Darkness gathered in the looming tree-limbs

 A rose glowed out of the darkness

 Pressing on, pressing on

On the radio today, Le Show reported

On a video of a Moldovan exorcist

Riding a possessed man like  a donkey,

That cross should fall and impale him

 You walk and walk,

You get past all that

 Otherwise you're just

One more person bugging

 The Flower,

The art brute sign painter

 Cosmology of Solstice

Mars and Jupiter emerge

Right on Oakland,
We don't give up the fight

 Looking sort of "far left"

For engineers and scientists

  Peace unto them

 Dragon City,

Chinatown noir

Having come full circle

We conclude in darkness

21 June 2015